Thursday, February 19, 2009

FUNGUS!

Normally, I dislike fungus. There's just something about the whole thriving on decomposing matter that grosses me out. But I decided to rise to the challenge issued by the Mad Scientists of Etsy (MSOE) team for the month of February: mycology. And I'm so glad I did!

I'd been tossing around ideas for a mushroom collage, and I thought the page of Japanese text was a great starting place. It needed a little oomph though, so I stamped some squares lightly in yellow and red. I wanted a semi-regular pattern or grid, but I didn't have a square stamp ~ so I cut out a couple from a carrot! Worked really well and gave the effect I was looking for: I decided I wanted to go with fairly realistic colours, so I chose a brick-coloured textured cardstock for the cap, and soft yellow for the gills. These I drew in by hand with pencil crayon and inked the cap with black, yellow and red for interest.Since the mushroom cap was red, I wanted the rest of the piece to be fairly neutral. I found a perfect piece of pattern paper for the stem ~ there are some lines and script on it. I inked the edges of the stem in black ink. Now to me a mushroom just isn't a mushroom without that cute little ring or cape around it's shoulders ~ and I just had to make it 3D (with a soft yellow piece of paper, folded, crumpled and inked): I just wasn't sure how to finish it. My breakthrough came today: I'll mount the collage onto a painted canvas board! I chose 2 shades of brown and a sparkly gold acrylic paint to cover the board. To bring everything together, I mounted the page of Japanese text on cherry red "handmade" (but store-bought) paper with gold fibers in it.Of course, I had to finish off the back of the piece too. So I covered it with a sheet of patterned paper ~ looks like orange canvas with a ribbon on the side:You can find it listed on Etsy HERE!